The Void Beyond A Butterfly's Wing
by xXHanamizukiXx
Summary: Based off the Yume Nikki fangame Miserere. In a world where humanity has been fragmented and destroyed, two remnants of this race meet. They dream to escape the mind-numbing reality that there is no hope for them, and in doing so they dive farther and farther away from what is known as the human norm.
1. Chapter 1

Somewhere, there are people. People who hate, love, cry, laugh-  
They are living. Embrace-warmth, smile-happy, strength-angry living. They are vivid, painted creatures, even if they lie and lie to themselves about a multitude of things.

Detached, I glide away. I have not spoken. I have not laughed. There's no one here to answer to my voice in this plant-dominated space station. The landscape outside is devastated, barren.

Was it fun? Being chosen to go, to live on a planet. Sure, why not? My own kingdom. My own place. No rules, no judgments, no restrictions.  
The silence is smothering. In a decade and two years I've learned to adapt- perhaps too well. I have no other escape from this sameness than my own dreaming.

And so I drift off. They leave me exhilarated, exhausted. I sleep and I sleep and I sleep. I wander past hallways of hands and elegant, malformed mannequins dancing motionlessly in the untouched air. Worlds that belong and do not belong.

As I write this I wonder if anyone will ever find this place. I wonder if any throbbing warm hand will turn the then-brittle pages as they grimace at my skeleton.

Will I cease to exist? A puff of air, my memories and dreams and words extinguished. If I were to disappear now, twenty-seven years of mingled solitude and former "living" who would remember?

Who would remember me?

Aimless, I am existing. Merely existing. I have no purpose. I have nothing to live for. But yet I am still here, still here, just sleeping and waiting, sleeping and waiting. As my mind frays, I turn over. Bury my face into the blankets, waiting for the warmth to come.

Let me dream.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I open my eyes to yet another unfamiliar landscape. Intricately woven brown reeds arch above me in a patterned, dense ceiling. The walls with tiny, tiny cracks allow a warm, lovely golden light to shine through.

As I lean back into my nest, the softness of birds' down and my own thoughts greet me.

There are different kinds of silence and solitude. Empty ones, meaningful ones, and simply peaceful ones. I dream within a dream. My mind scatters into a thousand crystalline fragments, shimmering with shadow and light.

I am alive. I am alone. I am male. I am twenty-seven. I am silent.

I allow myself to sink further into nothingness.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

The sound of cheering and clapping awakens me. Startled, I bolt upright in my red velvet seat and glance at my surroundings. Above, a glistening chandelier banishes the shadows to the ceiling, where they hover and obscure any judgment of the building's height. Rows and rows of chairs fill the ivory-paneled auditorium. I blink as I notice the scattered audience of flower-headed people.

There's nothing on the stage, except for a strange, glowing crystal. As I rise and walk down the aisle, the flower-headed people clapping and cheering,

There's something inside. The crystal is icy, unwelcoming. I press my cheek against and peer closer.  
Is that...someone?

ooooooooooooooooooooo

The sound of a loud rattling awakens me. I throw myself out of bed in a panic, my heart racing and racing- a tremendous change from the years of sluggish existence. Helmet, equipment, suit- chest pounding, head whirling, my feet grow wings and fly out of the station.

The roar drowns me. I wave my arms, I scream inside my helmet, but the ship takes no notice. I watch with glazed eyes as it departs, just as soon as it came.

Gone. My chance is gone. Sinking to my knees I feel the uncaring, cruel rocks of this planet dig into the suit-

What _is_that? Vision blurring, I squint at the strange white thing, pure and immaculate compared to the rust, the grayness of this planet and myself.

Puzzled, I decide to lug it in.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It's some sort of capsule. Questions that will not be answered crowd like unwelcome guests into my stunned mind.

Why would they leave it here? Is it dangerous? Will I die?

Hesitating, my hand trembles as I reach out to open it.

_Will I die_? Perhaps there is some part of me that wants to. To immerse myself into the void, relieving myself from the cold company of distant stars and malignant plant growth, green tendrils creeping into the concrete cracks.

I unlock the capsule.

My heart stops.

There are tubes running through the coffin-like object. Tubes that I clearly can see transporting liquids and air. Nutrients for life, for _living_.

She is as lovely as the moon that I see once every year, its luminescent glow suffusing this dark world with a temporary lightness. Her eyes are shut, chest rising with slow, _living _breaths. Dark hair is carefully arranged beside her pale, petal-delicate face. Her limbs are doll-like, graceful, with a coltish innocence indicating her to be in her teen years- perhaps sixteen to eighteen.

Crouching by her side I am almost afraid to touch her. One grasp of the hand and she will float away, her light diminishing as she vanishes.

Her serene face is quiet and warm, but it gives nothing away aside from her sleeping presence. Glancing down, I notice the glint of metal at her throat.

The only personal thing on her, besides her snow-touched clothing, is a slender chain around her neck, with a simple crescent moon nestling at her collarbones. She looks as if someone treasured her.

Why did they leave her here? Will she wake from her silvery cocoon?

I sit down on the floor and lean against the wall, staring off into the soft light emanating from the pristine casket.

_I wonder what you're dreaming about._


	2. Chapter 2

I was born in a laboratory. Stainless steel, antiseptics, wires and wires of sterile spotlessness. We emerged from grotesque, metal-sheathed wombs like deformed worms of pale pink and blue, translucent and glowing.

We were the remainders of a race that had destroyed itself, with its lies and deceit, its hatred and intolerance. In attempting to control ourselves humanity merely pulled itself apart. The fragments of living flesh diminished and diminished. In one last pitiful attempt we put aside our arguments and collaborated to form those who would travel past the apathetic stars, just hoping and hoping that our genetically-molded hearts would continue beating.

I don't know if it worked. We were implanted with varied intelligence, loads of dead, non-existent information that I found tiresome. Who wants to remember the past? Memories and memories of humans fighting and losing and standing up against one another.

We ourselves were the enemy. Not an alien invasion, not a zombie outbreak, not a natural disaster; it was a massive weapon of destruction we decided to unleash on ourselves, in the name of whatever entity that supposedly governed our lives.

But in reality we were just killing ourselves slowly. History moved backwards and forwards in a twisted game of snakes and ladders, only to reach this final stage. What was it all for?

I didn't know. I didn't know why I was a girl. Why I had black hair. Why they accelerated my growth to about seventeen years of age. They spoon-fed me things such as emotion, morality; the structures that failed to hold up society. What they had built was all a lie. Weren't we just deluding ourselves?

We were loaded into snow-white capsules, coffin-like and intended for slumber. They didn't come with us, those white-coated scientists. Their lined faces were weary and old, ancient even.

Quietly, we slept in those caskets, with faulty automatons watching as we continued to glide in space.

Where am I? Should I even care? My dreams are so wonderful, so clear and calm. I dream of a space where I can just curl up, the stars singing their melancholy chimes above. I inhale the nothingness and become one with it.

I am sleeping.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooo

It's been two days since I've discovered her, cradled in her nest of silver-white. Her delicate eyelids have not opened.

I sit here and allow the questions to swarm. Occasionally I touch the side of the casket to make sure she's real. She's not a figment of my already cracked sanity.

But who knows? Maybe she's only tangible to me and if anyone else was here they'd just see me stretching out to nothing in the air.

Leaning against the wall I breathe, in and out. Sleep begins to shut my eyes-

Perhaps there's still hope for her awakening.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooo

Light?

I stir. I feel refreshed- a strange feeling, compared to the dullness of life at the laboratory. The light here is not harsh and blinding; it's a soft, gentle illumination. I sit up and glance around.

I'm inside. It's probably some space station- but the walls are overgrown with plants. It's a messy and different look from the pure chambers I'm used to. And there's-

Human? He's sleeping quietly against the wall next to my capsule, auburn hair falling over his eyes. His clothing is black, yet another difference from the white and gray that everyone I knew wore.

Carefully, I lower my legs across the edge-wait. A crescent moon of silver dangles into my vision. What is that? I've never seen that before. The cold metal is enveloped in my hand as I examine it for a while, and then I return my attention to the man.

I hesitate...and then I reach out to touch his face. It is cool but definitely living.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooo

I can't control it. This is a nightmare.

The crimson-stained hallway stretches out before me. I am revisiting the station where I was born- to a mother, a real person.

The light flickers as I step past shattered tiles, ripped posters. I open the flecked steel door-

Flesh. Fused. Eyeballs rolling, red veins popping out, pulsing and beating. Skin peeled back, skin still here and there, organs overflowing. I open my red, red throat to scream and I find it all gone.

What happened?

It's pure and quiet here. The white expanse goes on and on in front of me, mists hovering and gliding away coquettishly.

_"Hello?"_ A voice? A _human _voice?!

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooo

"Hello?" I gasp as though I've just emerged from water, my eyes wrenching open. And then I see her, feel her warm hand on my face.

Her eyes are green- a crystalline, light green, honeydew and fresh. She's startled by me, her black lashes framing her pale eyes stunningly.

"I-"

"Sorry-"

We stop and stare at one another. Neither of us know what to do-

In a long-forgotten tradition of courtesy, I give her my hand.

"You first."

"I don't have a name."

"They never called you anything?"

"I was Subject K-701."

"...Luna. I'll call you Luna."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooo

He's strange to me. I can tell he's lived somewhere similar like me; injected with the information of the long-dead. But he says he rose from the womb of a real mother. I wonder if he had any relationship- the warmth of this mother's arms.

Our communications are awkward, but they move along. I watch his dark eyes as we talk.

"You really spent twelve years here?"

"Twelve years. I'm surprised I'm not mad. Maybe I am and you're just a hallucination." Shaking my head, I give him my hand.

"I must be a real and solid hallucination then." His smile emerged, creaky and slightly unsure, but there.

Aimlessly we speak, our words swallowed by the green growth and the darkness.

"Do you think there's still other people out there?"

"I don't know. Maybe there is some sort of community out there."

"But you've never seen a ship land here until I came."

"Yes. It's possible most of us are dead by now."

"...Are you sad about that?"

"I'm not sure. Don't you think we've been forgotten? Who will care about humanity once it's gone? All our achievements, our foolish arguments- in a puff of disintegrating dust, they go out of existence." I pick at my clothes, allowing my fingertips to brush the threads.

"I wonder why we're still trying to hang on, without a goal."

"What _are_we living for?"

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooo

Clasped hands, we wander together. The space station is silent as our voices echo and rebound back to us. There are multitudes of me, ten thousands of Luna.

When we sleep, we dream. And this is where I feel as though our minds are frayed to the point where they tie loose threads with one another, connecting our subconscious.

I find her in my worlds, I stumble into hers. We also talk there.

"Are you real?" She tilts her head to the side.

"Are _you _real?" I blink at her.

"Perhaps you're the one dreaming me, or I'm the one dreaming you."

"Or someone else is dreaming of both of us and neither of us truly exists."

"That's a possibility." And she steps away from me, turning into a cloud of silver-winged butterflies.

Other times we explore together in silence. The worlds are dark and limitless. Our feet travel past an abandoned art gallery, a zoo. Sometimes we are killed. I watch as monsters grab her and tear her into pieces, or she stands as my insides are wrenched out by the voracious wolf who stalks the icy caverns cold.

There is no end to these fantasies. Suspended in a place alone, we dance for a audience of skeletons.

What is hope?


End file.
